Children’s sedentary behaviour, health and the family environment – November 2015

We know that physical activity in children has health benefits, and recently there has been an increasing focus on sedentary behaviour as a possible health risk. So how much do we really know about the impact of too much sitting, and what role does the family have in tackling it?

A lot of attention has been given to TV viewing or other screen-based behaviours, such video gaming. In fact, children engage in a wide range of sedentary behaviours, such as doing homework, travelling by car and reading, with notable differences between boys and girls.

Data from the SPEEDY study shows that at age 10 children accumulated over 7 hours of sedentary time on average each day across a range of activities. Sedentary time also increases with age – by around 10 minutes a day each year between the ages of 10 and 14.

Fig 1: Time spent (minutes per day) in different sedentary activities

How is it related to overall physical activity?

Sedentary behaviours do not occur in isolation from each other or from other health behaviours; they coexist within broader lifestyles that may promote or harm wellbeing.

A recent systematic review indicated that the correlation between physical activity and sedentary behaviour in children is weak. In other words, it is entirely possible for children to do enough moderate and vigorous physical activity, but still accumulate high levels of sedentary behaviour.

UK guidelines recommend that all children and young people should minimise the amount of time spent being sedentary for extended periods. This broad guidance reflects the emerging nature of evidence on this topic.

There is some evidence that individuals who engage in high levels of sedentary behaviour during childhood maintain this pattern of behaviour into adolescence and even adulthood, though this relationship varies for different types of behaviour and weakens as the duration of follow-up increases. Nonetheless, this suggests that the effects of interventions to change sedentary behaviour during childhood may persist into later life.

Sedentary behaviour and the family environment

Much of the research concerned with understanding what influences sedentary behaviour in children has focused on TV viewing or screen-based activities. Whilst this gives a limited picture of total sedentary behaviour, review evidence suggests that older children, those of non-white ethnicity and those from lower socioeconomic status families are more likely to have higher levels of screen-based sedentary behaviour.

Consistent with our observational findings, evidence from intervention studies shows that programmes which involve parents can be effective in reducing sedentary behaviour, particularly amongst pre-school aged children. Regardless of the study setting (e.g. home, school or community) it appears that the greater the level of parental involvement the more likely it is that a programme will be effective in changing behaviour.

A future Evidence Brief will look at the school environment and its influence on physical activity and sedentary behaviour in the CEDAR-led Creating Active School Environments (CASE) study www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/case

Implications for policy and future research

Further research is required to understand the impact of sedentary behaviours on health and inform the development of public health recommendations.

Future research should use longitudinal data wherever possible and seek to identify the shared and unique determinants of different types of sedentary behaviour.

Changing features of the home environment and parental behaviours is a promising route to changing sedentary behaviours in children. Interventions should focus beyond just reducing screen activity.